Ubisoft has released a new trailer showing off its efforts in this area, and has also invited PC players to join a beta which kicks off on October 15. It will allow access to the entirety of the updated map, new bikes and specs, the weather system, FreeDrive Stunts and FreeDrive Challenges, and of course the new graphics.

All PC players, including those who participated in trials or past betas, are automatically granted entry; everyone else can sign up for the waiting list. There’s no NDA so expect plenty of information in the weeks to come.

In other The Crew news, Ubisoft has brought developer Ivory Tower in house. So that’s a thing.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2015/10/06/the-crew-wild-run-gets-new-trailer-pc-beta/feed/0The Crew may allow PC users to bump up to 60 fpshttp://www.vg247.com/2014/10/16/the-crew-pc-60-fps-frame-rate-ubisoft/
http://www.vg247.com/2014/10/16/the-crew-pc-60-fps-frame-rate-ubisoft/#respondThu, 16 Oct 2014 01:27:07 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=496119The Crew has locked at 30 fps during its PC beta, but Ubisoft is hoping to let players opt-in to a higher frame rate if they choose.

The Crew’s PC players would no doubt have found away to get around a frame rate lock anyway, but lead designer Serkan Hassan has confirmed that Ivory Tower and Ubisoft Reflections are working to ensure this option is officially available.

“Ultimately the performance and the frame rate will be down to the players hardware. A few people in the closed beta found ways of unlocking the frame rate,” he told TechRadar.

“My understanding at this moment is that we’ll be allowing players to do that come the full version as well, unless some other issue comes to light which would block that in any way.”

We don’t have any information about the Xbox 360 port, but the PS4 and Xbox One versions will run at 30fps.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2014/10/16/the-crew-pc-60-fps-frame-rate-ubisoft/feed/0The Crew displays at 1080p, 30FPS on Xbox One & PS4http://www.vg247.com/2014/04/09/the-crew-displays-at-1080p-30fps-on-xbox-one-ps4/
http://www.vg247.com/2014/04/09/the-crew-displays-at-1080p-30fps-on-xbox-one-ps4/#commentsWed, 09 Apr 2014 09:55:08 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=463570The Crew, Ubisoft’s new-gen racer, is confirmed to run at 1080p and 30 frames-per-second on Xbox One and PS4. Ah this old thing again…

Gerighty added that the PC build won’t be too different to the console versions and added that Ivory Tower is, “really trying to get parity across all versions, so it’s something that’s important to us not to branch out and not do individual things for individual platforms.”

On PS4 he added, “Reflections is doing the PS4 version and they’re doing an incredible job on it. We’ll be using the trackpad to manipulate the map and stuff like that, so they’ve really pushed two or three different things there.”

Speaking with CVG, creative director Julian Garrity was asked if The Wii U’s hardware ability, network capability or sales has seen Ubisoft skipped it in favour of next-gen formats.

“It’s a combination of those factors,” he replied, “and to be honest it’s not even a Wii U question, it’s more an issue of current gen as well. I’ve been on the project for the last two years and it’s got a history beyond that, and the target platform was always high-end PC in order to realise our visualisation of what the game should be and what it could offer.

“It’s a nice coincidence for us in many ways that the next-gen consoles have come along at the time that they have and that they have the architecture they have because it’s allowed us to make a pretty smooth transition to them.

“But honestly I think it was really an issue of the number of compromises we’d have to make on a number of platforms, not just Wii U. It would have been: “Well, we could do this but what would the impact be and what would that take away from what we were originally visualising?” That’s really the reason behind it. It’s a shame but, you know, things move on.”

Garrity was then asked why The Crew is coming to PS4 and Xbox One, when surely the industry’s technical understanding of current formats is at its peak – seeing as we’re at the cycle’s end. He replied, “I think the approach both of the manufacturers have taken in terms of the core of their systems has been a big help. I remember the days of people tearing their hair out at the thought of having to port to PlayStation 3 in the early days and I’ve not experienced any of that this time around.

“There are always challenges, for sure, with a multi-platform release but there’s a much greater consistency in terms of not only what the machines are capable of but also how the machines operate. It’s not been so bad for us but I think the key to that was the fact that for as long as I’ve been on the project we’ve led on PC, and we’ve seen that with a lot of people now.

“A lot of people are saying, well, regardless of what the sales platform may be, by taking that approach and leading on PC you’re going to put all of the versions on a very good platform and then from there you can look at what each one offers you and how you can push to maximise what that machine can do.

“But it’s been a good start for us and, you know, we’re not releasing until next year so we’ve still got some time to push those versions even further now that the specs have become more stable.”

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/10/03/the-crew-ivory-tower-explains-why-its-not-current-gen-praises-consistency-across-next-gen-formats/feed/1The Crew’s in-game New York City comparable to GTA’s Liberty City in sizehttp://www.vg247.com/2013/09/12/the-crews-open-world-is-rather-large-in-game-new-york-city-comparable-to-gtas-liberty-city-in-size/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/09/12/the-crews-open-world-is-rather-large-in-game-new-york-city-comparable-to-gtas-liberty-city-in-size/#commentsThu, 12 Sep 2013 19:20:54 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=407576The Crew, which is in development at Ivory Tower, will contain a rather large open-world for you to race about in – it does take you across the United States after all, which is a large bit of land.

Speaking with VG247 at gamescom, creative director Julian Garrity used Grand Theft Auto’s Liberty City as an example of how large a city such as New York City will be in the game.

“The drive from New York to Los Angeles takes about and hour and a half in a good car, driving along the streets,” Garrity said. “If you go off road, it will take about two and a half hours.

“To give you a sense of size comparison for the cities, and the complexity of the cities, the in-game version of New York City is about the same size as Grand Theft Auto’s Liberty City.”

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/09/12/the-crews-open-world-is-rather-large-in-game-new-york-city-comparable-to-gtas-liberty-city-in-size/feed/8The Crew gamescom walkthrough shows Ubisoft’s racer in actionhttp://www.vg247.com/2013/08/21/the-crew-gamescom-walkthrough-shows-ubisofts-racer-in-action/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/21/the-crew-gamescom-walkthrough-shows-ubisofts-racer-in-action/#commentsWed, 21 Aug 2013 13:47:36 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=400630Ubisoft has shown a new gameplay walkthrough and a batch of new screenshots for its upcoming next-gen racer The Crew. The game is open world with a wide variety of locales, and the screenshots show how a car can be customised to suit different terrain

The Crew is ambitious in scope. It aims to recreate a sandbox United States that allows you to drive wherever you want, completing races and other challenges as you go. It’s going to have stiff competition from the swathe of next-gen racers, but it’s looking pretty good so far. Check out the screens below.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/21/the-crew-gamescom-walkthrough-shows-ubisofts-racer-in-action/feed/3The Crew devs: co-op is not forced, campaign missions can be played solohttp://www.vg247.com/2013/08/07/the-crew-co-op-is-not-forced-all-missions-can-be-tackled-solo-says-ubisoft/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/07/the-crew-co-op-is-not-forced-all-missions-can-be-tackled-solo-says-ubisoft/#commentsWed, 07 Aug 2013 08:37:06 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=395746The Crew developer Ivory Tower has confirmed to VG247 that the entirety of its open world racer’s campaign missions can be played solo if you don’t fancy being bothered by other people.

As part of an interview you can read in full on VG247 soon, creative director Julian Gerighty explained that while connected play across The Crew’s 5000 km-squared world is encouraged, players can shut off the from the world and play the full campaign solo if they wish.

“Our experience is enhanced when gamers connect online, as they can then be a part of a fully living, breathing world filled with other players to challenge or crew up with,” he explained. “However, if some players are more of the solo type, they can play the full campaign SP, they are never constrained to play cooperatively with friends. And if they change their mind at some point, they always have the opportunity to team up with friends on-the-go, without having to go through intimidating lobbies.

“The Crew takes a very modern approach to multiplayer, in the sense that it is extremely adaptable. Just like in real life, some days you may want to be by yourself, others you’re eager to share new experiences with friends. In The Crew, all the missions can be played solo or with your crew and when playing with your crew, you’re enticed to play for yourself, in some way since the scoring system is rewarding individuals and not teams.

“All challenges can be played in the instant or asynchronously, and at the end of the day the player can always blacklist someone to remove him from surrounding traffic. In The Crew we blur the lines between solo and cooperative play, we found that sweet spot between the full online experience and a game that is enjoyable as a single player.”

Gerighty added that within The Crew’s depiction of America Ivory Tower has laid 10,000km of road, included 1,000 real-world landmarks and that variety across all of the games key regions, such as the canyons of Nevada and the bustling streets of New York City will be the key to delivering a diverse multiplayer experience.

Should you wish to engage other players in multiplayer, Gerighty explained how you would go about it by listing a few typical examples.

“In The Crew, you are part of an online world, with other drivers around you,” he explained. “The choice is yours to play on your own in this living world, or to team up on the go with friends whether this is to cooperate or to compete.

“We built a social interface that facilitates communication between players and makes it extremely easy to engage with others. You can crew up with other fellow drivers on your way to your next objective. It’s all seamlessly integrated and does not require you to stop driving.

“When playing with other crew members you can choose to jump into any campaign missions together but you could also set up your own race and give it a go. That’s the core of what we want: a living world constantly evolving around with people you can challenge or race with.”

It should be noted that The Crew’s team at Ivory Tower are the same people behind the Test Drive Unlimited series, which was also a racing game set in a large open world.

Refleting on the team’s experience with open world racers, Gerighty said of the original Test Drive Unlimited, “when it was released in 2007 [it] had a living world around the player and it was ahead of its time in terms of online features. It was not perfect.

“That vision of a connected world and a shared world between car enthusiasts, this is something that we are continuing to improve upon. So imagine five more years of iteration on this very idea. That is what we are bringing with The Crew.”

The Crew is coming to PC, PS4 and Xbox One early 2014

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/07/the-crew-co-op-is-not-forced-all-missions-can-be-tackled-solo-says-ubisoft/feed/10The Crew has been in development for four yearshttp://www.vg247.com/2013/07/29/the-crew-has-been-in-development-for-four-years/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/29/the-crew-has-been-in-development-for-four-years/#commentsMon, 29 Jul 2013 00:03:13 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=392631The Crew was originally conceived of as a current-gen release, but got too big for this generation’s boots.

In a new interview with Digital Trends, creative director Julian Gerighty said The Crew has been in the works for quite some time – but not because if development troubles.

“This game started over four years ago. The game hasn’t changed, its just taken that long to get it working and working as well as we want it to be working,” he said.

“All of the concepts that we have here are concepts that the team has been working on for the last ten years. The massive open world that’s shared with hundreds of other players? That’s something that the team did for Test Drive Unlimited, which was ahead of its time.”

How far ahead of its time? Well, given Ubisoft’s new obsession with shared worlds, about one generation. In fact, The Crew has a bit of a lead on its rivals, having begun life as a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 level title before being moved over to next-gen when the project outgrew the hardware.

“It happened about a year and a half ago, where we realized we can push this a little bit further, we can push the personalization of the world, the non-procedural nature of the world, a little bit further if we do it on Xbox One and PS4,” Gerighty said.

“So our Miami is radically different from our New York, which is normal but it takes a lot of work to get it to that level of quality. And that’s only possible on this next-generation.”

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/29/the-crew-has-been-in-development-for-four-years/feed/3The Crew has 10,000 km of road, no player limithttp://www.vg247.com/2013/06/24/the-crew-has-10000-km-of-road-no-player-limit/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/06/24/the-crew-has-10000-km-of-road-no-player-limit/#commentsSun, 23 Jun 2013 23:35:37 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=381715During Ubisoft’s E3 2012 presentation the publisher called The Crew the biggest game ever made, boasting the whole of the United States as its game world. That’s probably hyperbole, but Ivory Tower COO Ahmed Boukhelifa has some more concrete and still very impressive details.

Speaking to OPM, Boukhelifa admitted that describing the game’s world as the whole of the US is “poetic license”.

Being so large, the world map “opens the road to much, much more gameplay experiences than before. You have this huge open-world. We spent lots of time-building a physics model with the goal to create all the cars with differences in handling, but also to tune them and make them behave correctly whether you’re on a dirt track, completely off-road, roaming the mountains, on circuits.

“With this and the variety of the physics experience, all the cars in this huge open-world, we can really provide this a la carte experience of driving the way you want, as you want.”

The game’s world is dividied into five regions which gradually unlock as the player progresses, adding new cars and gameplay features. Boukhelifa said Ivory Tower spent a lot of time deciding just how much to include.

We worked for about a year on research because it was, of course, a technical constraint but possibly a gameplay constraint. What is the right size to make an interesting world?” he said.

“We thought ‘big’, because we want this exploration, we want to [be able to] cross the desert, but not to be too big for the experience that was there. So you are always one minute away from a challenge, a mission. So the size we have today, I think, is the perfect fit and balance for the game we wanted to do”.

During the E3 demo, Ubisoft said the racer is like an MMO, with drop-in, drop-out multiplayer. Boukhelifa went into further detail on that, too, describing an impressive scenario.

“The way we work is we split, technically speaking, the area around you is peer-to-peer, all the MMO services, they come from the server. Those MMO services can manage for everyone in the world from a selection of localised servers and those servers network together,” he said.

What does that mean? It means there’s no limit to how many players can be alongside you in one session, apparently. “We cannot limit,” Boukhelifa said.

From Ubisoft Reflections and Ivory Tower, The Crew has players customising their vehicles and taking over rival gang’s territory. It’s set in the US, and will cover the whole country. We saw gameplay from Miami, with South Beach and more featured.

It has an emphasis on multiplayer in an online persistent world, blurring the lines between co-op, competitive and solo play. Every mission and event will be available in multiplayer or solo, with players surrounded by both AI and real players.

There are no lobbies; single-player and multiplayer exist seamlessly in the same world. Players can quickly invite their friends to come help them with missions.

There are “thousands” of 20 second trials scattered around the map to reward exploration.

In customisation mode, players can strip their car right down to the frame and build it up piece-by-piece with performance parts; it looked like this was rendered in real time as you do it.

Ubisoft called The Crew “the biggest game ever created”. A live multiplayer demonstration was shown which you can check out along with the trailer below.

While the live demo was shown, Ubisoft conference host Aisha built her own custom car on a tablet, demonstrating how quick it is; this feature will be on show at Ubis’ booth.

Here’s the full blurb from the press release:

Key Takeaway
The Crew is a revolutionary action-driving game developed exclusively for next-gen consoles and high-end PCs that leverages the new hardware capabilities to connect players online like never before. The Crew takes you and your friends on a reckless ride inside a massive, open-world recreation of the United States that is brimming with exciting challenges. Generous in content and tailored for the connected generation, The Crew is the next-gen game that redefines action-driving.

Product Description
Take part in a relentless ride to infiltrate and overtake the 510s, a gang grown around Detroit’s illegal street racing scene. Your plan? Get a rep on the underground-racing scene and sabotage their activities city-by-city all across the United States. Maneuver through the bustling streets of New York City and Los Angeles, cruise down sunny Miami Beach or trek through the breathtaking plateaus of Monument Valley. Each locale comes with its own set of surprises and driving challenges to master. On your journey you will encounter other players on the road – all potentially worthy companions to crew up with, or future rivals to compete against. This is driving at its most exciting, varied and open.

Key Features
– NEVER DRIVE ALONE
Jump in and out seamlessly and build your crew of four through bonding or intense rivalry. Whether your objective is to takedown a convoy or to escape the police, achieving it with friends ensures a fresh experience each time you join in.
– A PLAYGROUND OF UNPRECEDENTED SCOPE AND VARIETY
The entire United States is your driving playground – all roads and everything in between. Every type of terrain imaginable is yours to master – from downtown city streets to suburbs, hillsides, cornfields, canyons, desert dunes or even race tracks.
– THE EXPERIENCE GOES ON, WHEREVER YOU ARE
Continue the experience on iOS, Android tablets, and on the web. Keep track of your friends’ performances and tinker with your ride before playing it live to set new records, or send your crew on jobs on-the-go to gain more XP and parts.
– PREPARE FOR THE NEXT JOB
An extensive tuning system combining depth and simplicity allows you to collect cosmetic and performance parts and customize your licensed cars, according to your style and driving preferences.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/06/10/the-crew-announced-at-ubisoft-e3-presser/feed/4PS4 racing game in the works at Ivory Tower – rumourhttp://www.vg247.com/2013/02/01/ps4-racing-game-in-the-works-at-ivory-tower/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/01/ps4-racing-game-in-the-works-at-ivory-tower/#commentsFri, 01 Feb 2013 05:01:09 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=335591The résumé of a contract 3D artist makes mention of a “confidential game” in the works at a developer called Ivory Tower, for Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 – and PlayStation 4. Industry sleuth Superannuation reports Ivory Tower is staffed by former members of Eden Games, and the upcoming racer is a spiritual successor to Test Drive Unlimited published by Ubisoft. Sony is expected to reveal the PlayStation 4 at this month’s PlayStation Meeting.
]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/01/ps4-racing-game-in-the-works-at-ivory-tower/feed/3Midship and Ivory Tower get revamped in Halo: Reachhttp://www.vg247.com/2010/08/04/midship-and-ivory-tower-get-revamped-in-halo-reach/
http://www.vg247.com/2010/08/04/midship-and-ivory-tower-get-revamped-in-halo-reach/#commentsWed, 04 Aug 2010 17:36:26 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=110548

Those waiting on Halo: Reach to release, and are fans of Halo 2, should be pleased to know remakes of the Midship and Ivory Tower maps will appear in the game under the monikers Zealot and Reflection, respectively.

According to a preview over on IGN, Reflection contains the sniper tower elevator even, but those who were used to camping out on the map should know the hologram armor in Reach makes that much more difficult this time around.

Zealot has the same layout as Midship, but a third level featuring lower gravity has been added to it.

A new multiplayer map called Spire has been added to Invasion mode, and in it Spartans must get to the top of a tower as each section of the map is unlocked, slapping Elites around along the way.